Cletus: The outrage is from people who feel they were lied to and instead of apologizing google seems to be defending their actions.
You said: As far as SPYW goes, it's all about giving the users more relevant results. This is something you can opt out of (to some extent with privacy controls, otherwise with logging out).
This is not true.
Example 1: Search for cars while "opted" out of G+ results. Ferarri's G+ page is on top on the right, but no link to Ferrari's actual website or their FB page. So if this was focused on relevancy wouldn't the Ferrari link be to Ferrari's home page? Not that I think Ferrari is the most relevant result period, but wouldn't that make sense? Not only that, in your main results Ferrari.com isn't listed in the top 100. So how could they be relevant? This gives pageviews to G+ where the user should be going elsewhere. This isn't just about Twitter/Facebook. Google is driving users to its content over other publishers. This is an ADVERTISEMENT for Google+. 100% Which is against your policies not to mark them clearly as ads. http://www.google.com/competition/howgoogleadswork.html
Example 2: I searched for NFC Championship Game in Google while being opted in. I got a status update from MG Siegler stating he was going to the game in the top 5 results. MG Siegler is not in my circles. Wouldn't an article on the game be 100X better than this result. So you are driving users to your irrelevant content in replace of ESPN. That makes no sense.
Example 3. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/search-plus-your-world/ - Cutts did a search for werewolf. Was he looking for a picture of himself? Does anyone here find that useful? Most of the comments on his post didn't. I would like to know honestly. Would that be useful to you? Also, in the future, when I search for cars will I see my friends driving their cars as the 2nd result? I would personally rather see some info about how to buy a car or research a car or car prices.
Example 4: You can't opt out 100%. That is disingenuous to say you can.
Example 5: Google was supposed to be "Do No Evil" and you have squashed that. It is worse to be screwed by someone who claims to be trustworthy than someone you know is not. For example, we all knew Microsoft was shady from the beginning so we didn't expect much. But you guys said it was all about relevancy, the user, do no evil, etc. Look at this way, if a girl married Gene Simmons could she honestly be pissed if he was cheating on her? But if a girl married a guy like Donnie Osmond and he cheated she would be devastated. She was probably only with him in the first place because he was trustworthy. You are Donnie Osmond. :)
Anyway, if you guys came clean and said that you are trying to promote your network then maybe people wouldn't be so pissed. As of right now, it looks like you are trying to drive traffic to your own irrelevant content over legitimate content businesses. Since you have a dominant position in search and hundreds of thousands of companies/sites depend on your traffic, they are scared. Google is rapidly getting into the content game and people can only assume you will put your new content above everyone else's. That is bad for business and bad for startups which are country needs so badly right now.
Googler here - thanks for the real example query. Could you confirm if the query [nfc championship game] is still showing the MG Siegler post, or if it appeared only for a short while during the game. Thanks!
> Example 1: Search for cars while "opted" out of G+ results. Ferarri's G+ page is on top on the right, but no link to Ferrari's actual website or their FB page. So if this was focused on relevancy wouldn't the Ferrari link be to Ferrari's home page? Not that I think Ferrari is the most relevant result period, but wouldn't that make sense? Not only that, in your main results Ferrari.com isn't listed in the top 100. So how could they be relevant? This gives pageviews to G+ where the user should be going elsewhere. This isn't just about Twitter/Facebook. Google is driving users to its content over other publishers. This is an ADVERTISEMENT for Google+. 100% Which is against your policies not to mark them clearly as ads. http://www.google.com/competition/howgoogleadswork.html
I think it's pretty clearly marked what it is, right above it it says "People and Pages on Google+". Is it mixed in with the search results? Is it taking the place of search results? No, its not doing either. I don't think you can really complain that it violates the "Strict Separation of Ads and Search Results".
> Example 2: I searched for NFC Championship Game in Google while being opted in. I got a status update from MG Siegler stating he was going to the game in the top 5 results. MG Siegler is not in my circles. Wouldn't an article on the game be 100X better than this result. So you are driving users to your irrelevant content in replace of ESPN. That makes no sense.
Yes, it would be better in this case. But what if the game was going on and someone posted about something that had just happened? Wouldn't that be potentially more relevant? Figuring out relevancy is difficult. As of now, I don't see MG Siegler's post in my SPYW results, so I'm guessing it showing up for you had to do with the timeliness of the post.
> Example 4: You can't opt out 100%. That is disingenuous to say you can.
Can you be more specific as to what you can't opt out of?
> Example 5: Google was supposed to be "Do No Evil" and you have squashed that. It is worse to be screwed by someone who claims to be trustworthy than someone you know is not. For example, we all knew Microsoft was shady from the beginning so we didn't expect much. But you guys said it was all about relevancy, the user, do no evil, etc. Look at this way, if a girl married Gene Simmons could she honestly be pissed if he was cheating on her? But if a girl married a guy like Donnie Osmond and he cheated she would be devastated. She was probably only with him in the first place because he was trustworthy. You are Donnie Osmond. :)
ex1: it's an ad for google for google products no? It's not relevant like Cleetus said.
ex2: In 99% of searches I would never want to see that, but I just searched for sales and he is #3... some blurb about kindle fire sales. A. I don't need a status update on sales. B. He is linking out to an article about the kindle fire sales. Shouldn't the result go to the actual story? Isn't that more relevant? Not to mention that he has this on his twitter page too which Google HAS crawled. The twitter result is nowhere in the top 100. I barely use Google as it is, but I am definitely opting out of g+ results.
ex4: All of the stuff on the right hand side and the auto-suggestions are there whether you opt-out or not. Test it.
You said: As far as SPYW goes, it's all about giving the users more relevant results. This is something you can opt out of (to some extent with privacy controls, otherwise with logging out).
This is not true.
Example 1: Search for cars while "opted" out of G+ results. Ferarri's G+ page is on top on the right, but no link to Ferrari's actual website or their FB page. So if this was focused on relevancy wouldn't the Ferrari link be to Ferrari's home page? Not that I think Ferrari is the most relevant result period, but wouldn't that make sense? Not only that, in your main results Ferrari.com isn't listed in the top 100. So how could they be relevant? This gives pageviews to G+ where the user should be going elsewhere. This isn't just about Twitter/Facebook. Google is driving users to its content over other publishers. This is an ADVERTISEMENT for Google+. 100% Which is against your policies not to mark them clearly as ads. http://www.google.com/competition/howgoogleadswork.html
Example 2: I searched for NFC Championship Game in Google while being opted in. I got a status update from MG Siegler stating he was going to the game in the top 5 results. MG Siegler is not in my circles. Wouldn't an article on the game be 100X better than this result. So you are driving users to your irrelevant content in replace of ESPN. That makes no sense.
Example 3. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/search-plus-your-world/ - Cutts did a search for werewolf. Was he looking for a picture of himself? Does anyone here find that useful? Most of the comments on his post didn't. I would like to know honestly. Would that be useful to you? Also, in the future, when I search for cars will I see my friends driving their cars as the 2nd result? I would personally rather see some info about how to buy a car or research a car or car prices.
Example 4: You can't opt out 100%. That is disingenuous to say you can.
Example 5: Google was supposed to be "Do No Evil" and you have squashed that. It is worse to be screwed by someone who claims to be trustworthy than someone you know is not. For example, we all knew Microsoft was shady from the beginning so we didn't expect much. But you guys said it was all about relevancy, the user, do no evil, etc. Look at this way, if a girl married Gene Simmons could she honestly be pissed if he was cheating on her? But if a girl married a guy like Donnie Osmond and he cheated she would be devastated. She was probably only with him in the first place because he was trustworthy. You are Donnie Osmond. :)
Anyway, if you guys came clean and said that you are trying to promote your network then maybe people wouldn't be so pissed. As of right now, it looks like you are trying to drive traffic to your own irrelevant content over legitimate content businesses. Since you have a dominant position in search and hundreds of thousands of companies/sites depend on your traffic, they are scared. Google is rapidly getting into the content game and people can only assume you will put your new content above everyone else's. That is bad for business and bad for startups which are country needs so badly right now.